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Perspectives on
Working Life
Perspectives on
Working Life
By
Matthew Etherington
Perspectives on Working Life
By Matthew Etherington
All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without
the prior permission of the copyright owner.
Chapter 1 .............................................................................................. 1
Introduction to Work and Beliefs
Work Can Kill You: Get off the Treadmill ............................... 15
Joy, Happiness and Social Capital in the Workplace ............. 19
You Are What You Do ................................................................ 24
Working on the Railroad ............................................................ 28
Chapter 2 ............................................................................................ 33
A Brief History of Work
Ancient Greece and Rome .......................................................... 36
The Middle Ages and Work....................................................... 40
The Industrial Era, Scientific Management and the Division
of Labour ................................................................................. 44
The Gains and the Losses ........................................................... 54
Changes at Work ......................................................................... 59
Work as Laborer and Artist ....................................................... 70
Chapter 3 ............................................................................................ 76
What is Work?
The Protestant Work Ethic (PWE)............................................. 85
Work and the American Dream ................................................ 90
Chapter 4 ............................................................................................ 94
Theories and Studies about Work
viii Contents
The job, as it were, is his property: as long as he can stand and see, he
must hold it against all comers because in losing hold, he loses his claim
upon the world’s supplies of the necessaries of life.
—Change in the Village, George Bourne, 1912, 87.
Our work means a lot to us, even for those who do not enjoy the
toil. Through our work, we reveal what kind of human beings we
are and are prepared to be. Sometimes our work is a stepping-
stone to something else, and a means to an end. Other times, we
commit our whole lives to it, from the ‘cradle to the grave.’
Reframing Workplaces
There is no doubt that people can endure dramatic work changes
and in rapid time. In 2020, in the space of a few days, the Covid-
19 pandemic left offices and small businesses around the world
empty. As I am writing this book, the world is in the “middle” of
the virus, and predicting when it will end is near impossible.
When the number of people with the virus began to surge,
governments and politicians worldwide encouraged people to
self-isolate, stay at home, and work. Work became “essential”
and “non-essential.” “Social-distancing,” which was essentially a
non-word, now became a moral imperative. The Government of
the United Kingdom has recently launched a social distancing
device for the workplace. These are gadgets worn around the
neck that emit a sound or vibrate to keep people two meters
apart.
Perspectives on Working Life xi
2. Cultural worldviews
3. Indigenous worldviews
4. Humanist worldviews
Since 1889, people have been living longer than 70 years of age,
and many want to continue working. Moreover, for religious
people, the notion of “retirement” is not characteristic of life’s
purpose. As the sociologist James Hunter notes, people who hold
to a religious worldview, i.e., Christian, Jewish, Muslim, do not
have a retirement concept revealed in their teachings. When a
person adopts retirement, this is more than what a religious
worldview teaches and signals that ‘secular’ society is attempting
to become far more influential than is appreciated.
If the ancient Greeks were right about work, then there are
approximately 7.7 billion people in the world today living
unnatural lives due to their work commitments. That number is
nearly 70 percent of people in the world now who are working.
A striking figure of about 5 billion jobs: alternatively, it could just
be that Work is valuable and necessary for living a good and
meaningful life. Of course, this might depend on the type of work
one does. Some occupations, by their very nature, are destructive
to the mind, body, and soul.
Yet, there is always the good and the bad to consider concerning
anything in life. Nowhere is this more evident than in the 1951
movie, ‘A Christmas Carol.’ Ebenezer Scrooge is a stingy and
wealthy businessperson. He has no time for sentimentality and
largely views Christmas as a waste of time. For people like
Ebenezer, work becomes godlike. It is who they are; there is no
other reality, joy, or contentment outside of their occupation.
‘Workaholics’ are devoted to their work, which is not necessarily
a immoral commitment, but like most things in life, that which
can enrich can also destroy. The message is the same one that
Ebenezer Scrooge eventually realizes that money does not
produce happiness; instead, we need people to make us happy.
So with all this to consider, how content are we with our work,
and is contentment even an important factor? After all, most of us
have bills to pay, food to buy, rent to cover, and mortgages to
attend. Perhaps work supports you and your family in various
ways, and that is sufficient. Perhaps work provides you with
meaning and purpose in life. It could even be that work supports
a personal life goal. Regardless of the reason, be it psychological
or material or both, most of us need to work, and the ways we
think about work in terms of purpose expose our values and
beliefs about what is important to us.
1. Logging workers
2. Aircraft pilots and flight engineers
3. Roofers
4. Refuse and recyclable material collectors
5. Structural iron and steelworkers
6 Chapter 1
Of course, this is not an exhaustive list; many other jobs are not
listed here but have proved to be just as dangerous and deadly.
Up until the late 19th century, you could also be a medicinal leech
collector. In Tudor times, between 1485 and 1603 in England and
Wales, the Gong farmers were night-workers who did the
essential job of clearing human excrement from England’s
cesspits and latrines.
Our occupations can say a lot about our values, culture, priorities,
and beliefs. Of course, some people will always have more
meaningful work choices. They can choose employment based on
pay and benefits, job security, family wants and needs, workload,
opportunities for advancing a career, and so forth.
There are also those individuals who delay their working lives for
4-6 years to attend university or college. They do so in the
expectation of acquiring a particular type of work restricted to
their education. In most Western nations, attainable work via a
university degree usually comes at a tremendous financial cost.
For example, in the U.K., it is not unusual for graduates to be
paying their student loans back well into their 50s. Three-quarters
of university graduates will not earn very much after completing
their degree and will never clear that debt in a lifetime.
Some people have a deep sense of who they are, let us call this
identity, which can influence how they perform at work. Even if
we are not always aware of it, personal beliefs and values, which
make up our identities, guide our behavior, perceptions,
expectations, and relationships with colleagues, including the
questions we ask ourselves and the tasks we set for ourselves.
Since then, I have entered the world of work and have had my
fair share of highs and lows, but I believe that work is worthy. We
expect to work, and it makes us feel good about ourselves; work
can bring people together and even confirm what we believe
about life. I suggest that we are as civil as people when we are
working. With all things being equal, when work becomes a
problem, it is rarely the work itself but the work process, which
includes the quality of work relationships. In most cases, the
method of work is the problem and not the work.
In 1912, village life in Surrey, England, involved long days for the
worker. However, rather than being sheer tools of production, the
workers were “quiet and patient men (sic) who experienced no
less often a compensating delight in the friendly feeling of the
device responding to their skill (Bourne, 1912, 60). They were not
the tools but rather had control over the tools. The tool corresponded
with their body rhythms and not the other way around.
A few months ago, my local car mechanic, who is also the owner
and manager, told me that he would soon be resigning as a
16 Chapter 1
Moreover, his father was absent during most of his childhood and
he rarely saw his father. Consequently, my mechanic was
committed to living a very different work life. Life was too short,
death was too real, and this business, although prosperous, was
not worth an early end. Work is good until it becomes terrible. It
can give and also take away.
However, for those who work in sales and service, the knowledge
and creative sectors, and unskilled labor, it appears that workers
are less than satisfied. Since the Covid-19 pandemic of 2020 and
as time marches on, there seems to be waning tolerance for typical
working hours, i.e., nine to 5 pm, and a greater focus on leisure.
A recent 2020 Angus Reid Institute, public opinion poll, shows that
more than half of Canadians would now prefer a shorter 30-hour
working week, equivalent to a four-day working week. There has
been an awakened consciousness that life and leisure are short
and family and friends matter more—how quickly we adjust. In
terms of leisure, the Bureau of Labor Statistics website (2019)
reported that watching television is the number one leisure
activity in the United States. It occupies the most time (2.8 hours
per day), accounting for just over half of all leisure time, on
average.
18 Chapter 1
That was back in 2007. Since then, I have continued to learn more
about people and their work lives. Using personal insights and
my own working experience, I have come to appreciate that a
quality working life can provide us with ‘social capital.’ Social
capital is the network of trusted social connections, the pool of
collective resources, and supports. When social capital is absent,
disruption, and stress increase. A workplace rich in social capital
looks very much like a healthy community where people know
and trust each other. There is social bonding, and people have
some autonomy with decision making in their place of work. The
workplace is not just about making money, “it is about forming a
tribe, a community of people who share values, who find a sense
of meaning in their work and have a shared sense of social
purpose” (Murray, 2019, 10-17).
Most of the time, we are neither happy nor unhappy, but typically
somewhere in the middle. Psychologists refer to happiness as a
mood, and we often make mistakes about this frame of mind.
Happiness is experienced externally in good quality relationships,
and the quality of those relationships can be determined by how
well we relate to each other. If we are happy at work and connect
with at least one of our co-workers, we happily commit to doing
the necessary work. According to psychologist Abraham
Maslow, the goal is to reach self-actualization. This is the highest
goal a human can obtain. To reach our full creative potential self,
that is, to become self-actualized, a poet must write poetry, and a
musician must make music (Cable, 2018, 24). In other words,
what we can be, we must be.
When our work aligns with our core beliefs, our worldview, then
work, and identity is often closely matched, and our motives for
work increase because personal values and beliefs underscore the
work itself. My work colleague once said, “I work for God, not
the employer.” Another example is the many workers in Roman
antiquity who fused their selves with their work identity. Upon
death, these people would have the name of their occupations
secured to their gravestones. For example, a gardener from
Northern Lycia on the southern coast of Turkey had the following
tombstone text inscribed:
There was also Atos, the mineworker, who had the following
tombstone inscription:
Their identity originated from a job well done and an ideal that
duty and hard Work justified glorification to a god-like status
(Goosen, 1974, 22).
In 2004 when I first began asking teachers about their work and
identity, I came to appreciate that one relatively simple question
revealed enough for a better understanding of work and character.
I asked, “What do you do for work”? A very uncomplicated
question. The reply, not surprisingly, was just as straightforward,
“I am a teacher.” I then asked what they taught as a teacher. Once
again, the response was indistinguishable. In all the interviews,
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